U2 singer Bono's investments into Elevation Partners, which has offices in New York and Menlo Park, have helped make him the "worst investor investor in America," according to the online publication 24/7 Wall Street.

With large investments in Palm, Forbes, and Move.com -- "an unprecedented string of disastrous investments which even bad luck could not explain" -- Elevation Partners has earned the distinction of being "arguably the worst run institutional fund of any size in the United States," 24/7 Wall Street asserts.

Bono is listed on Elevation's website as one of the five leaders, along with Fred Anderson, former CFO at Apple Computer, Marc Bodnick, founding principal of Silver Lake Partners, Roger McNamee, co-founder of Silver Lake and Integral Capital Partners and Bret Pearlman, former senior managing director of The Blackstone Group.

Elevation bought 25 percent of Palm in 2007, and the company's stock has since tanked - down to $3.65 from $18 last September - after the company's efforts to regain mobile phone market share from Apple, RIM and other smartphone makers failed.

Citing unnamed sources, 24/7 says Elevation Partners put $300 million into Forbes' online operations in 2006, and the company's total value has dropped from $750 million to "perhaps $100 million."

Elevation put $100 million into Move.com, which owns home and real estate websites, and company shares subsequently lost 50 percent of their value, 24/7 noted.

And recently, Elevation committed to investing $100 million in Yelp, the San Francisco online user generated business review site, with $25 million to the company and the rest to stockholders. Shortly thereafter, Yelp was hit with multiple lawsuits claiming that it sought to extort money from local businesses in exchange for manipulating reviews, a charge the company says is false.

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